Nearly White Hot Stamper

The Rolling StonesExile On Main Street

Superb sound throughout with all four sides earning Nearly Triple Plus (A++ to A+++) grades - just shy of our Shootout Winner

This is Exile raw and real the way Glyn Johns and the band wanted it, the way that only the best Artisan pressings have any hope of sounding

5 stars: "Few other albums, let alone double albums, have been so rich and masterful as Exile on Main St., and it stands not only as one of the Stones' best records, but sets a remarkably high standard for all of hard rock."

On side two, a light mark on the edge makes 20 very light ticks during the intor to track 1, Sweet Virginia.

On side three, a light mark makes 10 very light to light ticks during the outro of track 4, I Just Want to See His Face.

These Nearly White Hot Stamper pressings have top quality sound that's often surprisingly close to our White Hots, but they sell at substantial discounts to our Shootout Winners, making them a relative bargain in the world of Hot Stampers ("relative" being relative considering the prices we charge). We feel you get what you pay for here at Better Records, and if ever you don't agree, please feel free to return the record for a full refund, no questions asked.

All four sides here have the kind of bass, energy, and presence that is essential for this music to rock the way it wants to. A copy like this conveys the emotional power of The Stones' performances in a way that most pressings simply fail to do.

This shootout is always a struggle, an uphill battle all the way. You'd have to find, clean and play a ton of copies to come up with four sides that can do this music justice. We're sure that Stones fans and Hot Stamper die-hards are going to be very pleased with this copy.

This vintage Artisan mastered pressing (the only ones that have any hope of sounding good) has the kind of Tubey Magical Midrange that modern records can barely BEGIN to reproduce. Folks, that sound is gone and it sure isn't showing signs of coming back. If you love hearing INTO a recording, actually being able to "see" the performers, and feeling as if you are sitting in the studio with the band, this is the record for you. It's what vintage all analog recordings are known for -- this sound.

If you exclusively play modern repressings of vintage recordings, I can say without fear of contradiction that you have never heard this kind of sound on vinyl. Old records have it -- not often, and certainly not always -- but maybe one out of a hundred new records do, and those are some pretty long odds.

What the best sides of Exile On Main Street have to offer is not hard to hear:

The biggest, most immediate staging in the largest acoustic space

The most Tubey Magic, without which you have almost nothing. CDs give you clean and clear. Only the best vintage vinyl pressings offer the kind of Tubey Magic that was on the tapes in 1972

Tight, note-like, rich, full-bodied bass, with the correct amount of weight down low

Natural tonality in the midrange -- with all the instruments having the correct timbre

Transparency and resolution, critical to hearing into the three-dimensional space of the studio

No doubt there's more but we hope that should do for now. Playing the record is the only way to hear all of the qualities we discuss above, and playing the best pressings against a pile of other copies under rigorously controlled conditions is the only way to find a pressing that sounds as good as this one does.

Of course, Hot Stampers can only give you what's on the tape. In this case, it's some rude, crude, dirty rock & roll. That's clearly what the Stones were going for here. In terms of audiophile appeal, Tea For The Tillerman it ain't.

Exile On Main Street may have some of The Rolling Stones best music on it, but those looking for the best sounding Stones album should look in the direction of Sticky Fingers or Let It Bleed. They're better recordings.

But this album is no slouch. It can be a bit gritty and grainy at times, but you gotta believe that's kind of the sound the Stones heard in the booth and were totally cool with.

What We're Listening For on Exile On Main Street

Energy for starters. What could be more important than the life of the music?

The Big Sound comes next -- wall to wall, lots of depth, huge space, three-dimensionality, all that sort of thing.

Then transient information -- fast, clear, sharp attacks, not the smear and thickness common to most LPs.

Tight, note-like bass with clear fingering -- which ties in with good transient information, as well as the issue of frequency extension further down.

Next: transparency -- the quality that allows you to hear deep into the soundfield, showing you the space and air around all the players.

Then: presence and immediacy. The musicians aren't "back there" somewhere, way behind the speakers. They're front and center where any recording engineer worth his salt -- Glyn Johns in the case -- would have put them.

Extend the top and bottom and voila, you have The Real Thing -- an honest to goodness Hot Stamper.

Vinyl Condition

Mint Minus Minus is about as quiet as any original pressing will play, and since only the right originals have any hope of sounding good on this album, that will most often be the playing condition of the copies we sell. (The copies that are even a bit noisier get traded back in to the local record stores we shop at.)

Those of you looking for quiet vinyl will have to settle for the sound of imports, later pressings and Heavy Vinyl reissues, purchased elsewhere of course as we have no interest in selling records that don't have the vintage analog magic that is a key part of the appeal of these wonderful recordings.

If you want to make the trade-off between bad sound and quiet surfaces with whatever Heavy Vinyl pressing might be available, well, that's certainly your prerogative, but we can't imagine losing what's good about this music -- the size, the energy, the presence, the clarity, the weight -- just to hear it with less background noise.

TRACK LISTING

Side One

Rocks Off
Rip This Joint
Shake Your Hips
Casino Boogie
Tumbling Dice

Side Two

Sweet Virginia
Torn and Frayed
Sweet Black Angel
Loving Cup

Side Three

Happy
Turd on the Run
Ventilator Blues
I Just Want to See His Face
Let It Loose

Side Four

All Down the Line
Stop Breaking Down
Shine a Light
Soul Survivor

AMG 5 Star Rave Review

Greeted with decidedly mixed reviews upon its original release, Exile on Main St. has become generally regarded as the Rolling Stones' finest album.

... the music is a series of dark, dense jams, with Keith Richards and Mick Taylor spinning off incredible riffs and solos. And the songs continue the breakthroughs of their three previous albums. No longer does their country sound forced or kitschy -- it's lived-in and complex, just like the group's forays into soul and gospel. While the songs, including the masterpieces "Rocks Off," "Tumbling Dice," "Torn and Frayed," "Happy," "Let It Loose," and "Shine a Light," are all terrific, they blend together, with only certain lyrics and guitar lines emerging from the murk.

It's the kind of record that's gripping on the very first listen, but each subsequent listen reveals something new. Few other albums, let alone double albums, have been so rich and masterful as Exile on Main St., and it stands not only as one of the Stones' best records, but sets a remarkably high standard for all of hard rock.

Do not attempt to play it using anything but the best equipment. You're going to need a hi-res, super low distortion front end with careful adjustment of your arm in every area -- VTA, tracking weight, azimuth and anti-skate -- in order to play this album properly. If you've got the goods you're gonna love the way this copy sounds. Play it with a budget cart / table / arm and you're likely to hear a great deal less magic than we did.

Used properly it can serve as a gauge to see how much Progress you've made in this hobby to date. I remember playing these pressings only ten or so years ago and hearing unacceptable levels of grit, spit, compressor distortion and the like. Today the sound we hear in our shootouts is dramatically bigger, richer, clearer, tubier and much less distorted.

Here is what I had to say about a Brewer and Shipley album that we ranked high on the Difficulty of Reproduction Scale:

I can also tell you that if you have a modest system this record is just going to sound like crap. It sounded like crap for years in my system, even when I thought I had a good one. Vinyl playback has come a long way in the last five or ten years [make that fifteen or twenty] and if you've participated in some of the revolutionary changes that I talk about elsewhere on the site, you should hear some pretty respectable sound. Otherwise, I would pass.

On the Difficulty of Reproduction scale, this record scores fairly high. You need lots of Tubey Magic and freedom from distortion, the kind of sound I rarely hear on any but the most heavily tweaked systems, the kind of systems that guys like me have been slaving over for thirty years. If you're a Weekend Warrior when it comes to stereo tweaking, this may not be the record for you.

This is a tough record to find the right sound for -- even if you do have an excellent pressing. It took us a long time to get to the point where we could clean the record properly, twenty years or so, and about the same amount of time to get the stereo to the level it needed to be, involving, you guessed it, many of the Revolutionary Changes in Audio we tout so obsessively.

It's not easy to find a pressing with the low end whomp factor, midrange energy and overall dynamic power that this music needs, and it takes one helluva stereo to play one too. If you have the kind of heavily tweaked system and room that a record like this demands, you are going to hear some surprisingly good sound when you drop the needle on these copy.